The Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale for Children; A Prospective Multi-Center Evaluation.

Status

Completed

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Observational

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT00807352

Acronym

PERC CTAS

Enrollment

1464

Registered

2008-12-11

Start date

2009-04-30

Completion date

2011-03-31

Last updated

2011-08-05

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Pediatrics, Triage

Keywords

Triage, Pediatrics, Emergency Department

Brief summary

The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity and the reproducibility of the canadian triage and acuity scale when applied by regular nurses for the triage of children in the Emergency Department.

Detailed description

The role of triage in the Emergency Department (ED) is to assign high priority to patients who need urgent care while identifying patients that may be able to wait safely. The Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) is a triage tool constructed from a consensus of experts that is universally used in Canada. Until now, there has been no evaluation of the validity of the tool for children in a clinical context. Also, its inter-rater reproducibility has not been evaluated. The expected implementation of a revised version of the Canadian triage tool in 2008 would be an ideal moment to evaluate its validity and reproducibility. Specific objective: 1. To evaluate the validity of the CTAS for children visiting a pediatric ED and 2. To measure the inter-rater agreement for nurses using the CTAS in these settings.

Interventions

None listed

Study design

Observational model

COHORT

Time perspective

PROSPECTIVE

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

No minimum to 18 Years

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Inclusion criteria

* Every patient younger than 18 years old that presents to the ED will be eligible except for those that need to go directly to the resuscitation room (triage level 1)

Exclusion criteria

* For ethical reasons, patients that need an immediate treatment will not be recruited in the study. * Patients for whom an informed consent could not be obtained (example: insurmountable language barriers) will not be included.

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame
The correlation between triage level and the hospitalisation rate	1 day
The inter-rater agreement between the two nurses measured by the weighted Kappa score	15 minutes

Secondary

Measure	Time frame
The correlation between triage level and admission to the intensive care unit	1 day
The correlation between triage level and length of stay in the ED after being seen by a physician	1 day
The correlation between triage level and resources use	1 day

Countries

Canada

Outcome results